PIKACHU CHRIST SUPERSTAR

Globally, we live in an extremely polarized society shaped by so-called culture wars, or “Kulturkampf,” where religion has become one of the main tools of politics. This connects very directly to my personal biography, since I spent eight years in a Catholic school in the countryside between 1996 and 2004, including Orbán’s first governmental period. Politics had a strong influence on the atmosphere of the school — for example our teachers told us if our parents won’t vote for Orbán, they will burn in the hell. My parents enrolled me in a Catholic school because they believed it would be a protected environment, while the teachers constantly spoke about the outside world as a place of temptation and moral decay. This community had its own bizarre understanding of reality, with narratives claiming that Metallica or Pokémon were satanic (most products of Western culture were considered the work of Satan). Meanwhile, we were constantly listening to Enya, collectively watching The Passion of the Christ, condemning Big Brother, and suppressing our sexual desires.

Over the last two years, I’ve started writing an autofictional prose text based on my memories, my personal archive, and background research about that period. From this still-evolving text, I want to create a hybrid genre performance somewhere between musical theatre, stand-up comedy and documentary theatre, together with a Hungarian choreographer Vadas Zsófia Tamara. The starting point of the piece is that during this period of my life I wanted to become a musical star, and every month I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the local theatre. So now I’m finally realizing this unrealized dream! 

Musically, it combines techno, church songs, Enya and pop hits from the late 1990s and early 2000s, the visual world is shaped by extravagant costumes and expressive projections built from archival materials, while the audience can move freely through the space like guests at a house party. Besides me, there will be two dancers and a DJ/sound designer on stage, who will not only represent the Holy Trinity but also embody other important figures from my life: demons and angels, priests and drag queens, Pikachu and Pope John Paul II.

The project will premiere in April of 2027, at the House of Music Hungary in Budapest.